


Introduction to Blessing and Thwarting

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Eden - Freeform, Food, Gen, Training New Angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 16:24:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Audio-only transcript, translated from the Enochian, of the last class Aziraphale ever conducts for a general audience of trainee guardians





	Introduction to Blessing and Thwarting

**Introduction to Blessing and Thwarting**   
_(Audio-only transcript, translated from the Enochian)_

Good morning! I’m your instructor, the Principality Aziraphale, and it’s so lovely to see how many angels are volunteering for this important work as our charges spread all over the globe! We have a lot of ground to cover, so - yes, miss?

Student Alaudiel: There’s an object on my desk. It’s made my hand sticky.

Yes, it’s a fresh-baked honeycake and yes,_ sticky_ is one of its more obvious qualities, if you touch it, so please, all of you, _don’t_ touch it until we reach that point in the class. In the meantime, for those of you who have _already_ touched it, I suggest you lick your fingers.

_General background sounds of licking and startled yums during next section._

The first thing I would like to emphasize is, that it is _not_ a guardian angel’s job to step in to prevent every little mistake or pain or danger an assigned human undergoes. Remember, humans and their free will are being tested. They already have a conscience telling them the difference between Good and Evil. They already have intelligence with which to distinguish between actions that will lead to suffering and those that don’t. It is no part of our duty to make these choices moot or to remove the consequences of them. No, our job is to _optimize the conditions_ for them to make the best possible choices and shine a light on the path on which they ought to tread. We - excuse me, _please_ leave the honeycakes alone! We’ll get to them in due course, I assure you.

Given that humans have both consciences and common sense, and that they live in social groups among other humans who _also_ have consciences and common sense, our job would seem, on the face of it, to be a simple one. But in fact, it is very delicate and difficult, requiring continuous weighing of constantly shifting variables, at which we_ all_ fail from time to time; and there are excellent reasons for that.

_A number of student voices murmur “Demons,” a rustle of feathers and agreement; followed by wing flapping and gasps._

It’s all right, it’s all right! I’ve just pulled up some footage from the Akashic Records. They _can_ be a little intense, I suppose, sorry to have startled you. The zoom shouldn’t have been quite so tight. So, zoom out - better? Good. Here we shall see, exactly as it happened, Eve meeting the Serpent of Eden, a demon by the name of Crawly who bypassed all our precautions by coming up through the ground. I’m using the full recording, so pay close attention to the emotional and ethereal tracks as well as the video and audio, please. And you - yes, _you_ \- stop poking that honeycake.

_Akashic Record begins; leaves rustling and birds singing throughout. Bare feet on a grassy path already worn by repetitive use; a slip; a hiss:_

Eve: Oh! Excuse me! I didn’t mean to step on you!

Crawly: A little bit of a thing like you won’t do me any harm! The end of the tail there is a bit ssensitive, but it’ll be fine in a moment.

Eve: Let me take a look at it....Well, it looks like a tail. You’re sure it’s all right? I stubbed my toe on a rock yesterday and it was _so_ unpleasant but you couldn’t see anything different.

Crawly: Quite all right, I promisse! Are you a new kind of creature? Did Adam name you while I was napping?

Eve: I’m Eve, the female of the human species. I don’t remember seeing you before, either.

Crawly: I’m just a humble sserpent named Crawly. The naming took sso long, I was worn out and sslipped away before it was over. What elsse have I misssed?

Eve: Adam keeps trying to reshape things. I invented flower crowns! And God added another tree - come along and I’ll show you.

_Footsteps resume; along with the nearly-silent whisper of scales through grass._

Crawly: A new tree? I thought She was done with all that.

Eve: No, She put it right in the middle of the garden and it’s _so pretty_! I come to look at it every day. Right through here - look!

Crawly: (_Flatly_) It’ss a tree all right. Fruit, flowerss, leavess, trunk, all accounted for. It’ss nicce and all, but I’m not sure it’ss worth going to look at _every_ day.

Eve: Oh, but this one’s different from every other tree in the Garden! It’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Crawly: That’ss a mouthful! What’ss good and evil, when they’re at home?

Eve: I don’t know. I’d have to eat the fruit to find out.

Crawly: And you haven’t?

Eve: No. No, it’s Forbidden.

Crawly: Thiss makess no ssensse. You’re pulling my leg, which issn’t fair when I don’t have any.

Eve: No, truly. We can eat the fruit from every other tree in the Garden, but not this one.

Crawly: If She didn’t want you eating from it why’d She put it here?

Eve: Where, where else would She put it?

Crawly: Oh, I don’t know, ssomeplacce outsside the wall, maybe, where you’re not passsing it all the time? A mountaintop, the moon? She’ss God, she can put it anywhere she wantss too.

Eve: And she wanted to put it here.

Crawly: And you come look at it every day?

Eve: Yes. Adam gets busy trying to make things and gets grumpy if I interrupt him. So I come here and admire the tree.

Crawly: Doesn’t look like any great shakess to me. It’ss jusst another tree.

Eve: It is_ not_! It’s the Forbidden Tree! God put it there and called us over and told us not to touch it or pick the fruit or we’d _die!_

Crawly: Oh, for - you wouldn’t _die_! Look, there’s bees all over the blosssoms! They’re fine!

Eve: Bees aren’t humans. And the flowers aren’t fruit.

Crawly: I’m not human. Could I touch it?

Eve: B-better not.

Crawly: What if the fruit fell off? Could you eat it then?

Eve: Fell?

Crawly: It’s bound to fall off if nobody picks it to eat. Or there’d be no room for new blosssoms.

Eve: ...That would be a shame.

Crawly: You know what elsse’d be a shame? If you or Adam or some random bunny tripped on that tree root there and fell againsst the trunk and died. I thought thiss garden was sssuppossed to be sssafe!

Eve: It _is_ safe! We have four angels with flaming swords keeping all the bad things out!

Crawly: Exccept for thisss tree, apparently. But it’sss nonsense! You wouldn’t die if you touched it! It wouldn’t be here if you would. But if you ate the fruit you’d know sssomething only God knows now. Come on, Eve, think!

Eve: ...I have been. I think about it every day. Adam says not to, but I can’t stop! I asked the angels about it - well, the Eastern Gate one, the others won’t say anything except they’re on duty and can’t chat - and Aziraphale says it’s ineffable and can’t possibly taste any better than the other fruits in the garden, but it looks so red and so ripe and it hangs _so low_! And I _want_ to taste it, _so much_, but I _can’t!_

Crawly: Of coursse you can.

Eve: It’s forbidden!

Crawly: What’ss forbidden, Eve? What kind of thing is a forbidden? I don’t ssee a forbidden here. I can’t ssmell one. Iss it ssomething like a wall? Because thiss tree’ss as far from a wall as itss possssible to get in thissss Garden.

Eve: Of course you can’t touch a forbidden, it’s not a thing, it’s a, an idea -

Crawly: If you can’t touch a forbidden, then it can’t touch you. It can’t ssstop you. Unlesss you let it.

Eve: And then I’d know. What Good and Evil are. I think they’re more ideas. That’s my best guess.

Crawly: Well, if you can be ssatissfied with a guesss...

Eve: (_very quietly_) Sometimes I think I’ll never ever be satisfied again.

Crawly: You don’t even have to touch the tree to get the fruit. Look here - that one’s about to fall off anyway - I don’t think I ever sssaw a riper fruit. If I jusssst ssslip up there and - hissssss on it -

_Barely audible thump of apple hitting grass_

Crawly: And there it isss.

Eve: What will happen? If I eat it?

Crawly: Only one way to find out.

_Crunch!_

Students: Moan in chorus.

_Aziraphale, heretofore cheery, now sounds strained, as if holding back tears_. And that’s as much as any of us can take right now, I think. So, did anything stand out to any of you - excuse me, the next time I see anyone touch a honeycake, even with a quill, I’m gathering them all up again. I’m serious. Now, did anyone notice anything in particular about how this went?

Hylochiel: You were the angel at the Eastern Gate that answered her when she asked about the tree.

Yes, but that’s not germane to the issue. Our focus here is on Eve and Crawly.

Alaudiel: She wasn’t afraid of him.

Amazilale: I know she thought all the dangerous things were outside, but that Serpent was enormous!

Pirangiel: Yeah, but so what? Elephants are enormous too and they were in the garden.

Excuse me, what did I tell you about the honeycakes? That’s it, you just_ had_ to muck about, didn’t you? (_Snap_!) Now nobody has one. I hope you’re happy.

_Disappointed sounds_

Focus, angels! You saw everything, you heard everything, you felt the emotion track. What did we just witness?

Alaudiel: They talked for a long time. And he never said, straight out, _Eat the fruit._

No, he did not. Nor, as you presumably noticed, did he make any attempt to plant the idea directly into her brain, which is a trick popular with less accomplished demons. He never used a single miracle. In fact, I’ve encountered him several times since then, in the field, and I’ve seen him use miracles many times - but _never_ to accomplish a temptation. What else?

Hylochiel: I don’t remember, when I heard the news at the time, I’d never heard anything about Adam and Eve dying if they touched the tree.

Bingo. Adam and Eve were never told not to touch the tree. Only eating the fruit was forbidden. Nor was any penalty for disobedience ever specified. In short, Eve lied.

_General astonishment_

Now, why would she do that? This is where we find out who did, in fact, pay attention to the emotion track after I specifically recommended it to you - yes, sir?

Pirangiel: She was - annoyed.

Why do you suppose that was?

Alaudiel: Because...the Serpent wasn’t impressed by the Forbidden Tree.

Exactly! The Tree she visits daily, wonders about daily - and the Serpent doesn’t seem to think it important. So she exaggerated, and the next thing she knew, he was calling her bluff. And I’ll tell you something that isn’t in the recording, but which I have on reasonably good authority - Hell didn’t send Crawly up with orders to tempt the humans to eat of the Forbidden Tree. He had generalized orders to ‘cause trouble.’ So he put himself on a path that Eve regularly walked on alone, struck up an acquaintance, and let _her_ tell him what trouble there was to get into. Because -?

Amazilale: Because she - already wanted to eat the fruit?

Yes. She did. Now, I loved Eve. She was sweet, loving, vibrant, curious, generous, kind -! She had so many, many virtues. But my knowledge of her character and my subsequent experience of humans leads me to believe that there is a strong possibility that, if we had successfully kept Crawly and his kindred out of the Garden, she might eventually have decided to eat the fruit, all on her own.

_Sounds of distressed disagreement_

I know, I don’t like to think it either. Crawly made it easier for her to sin - but she had the potential to sin before he ever came along. And this is something that a Guardian has to contend with every single day.

Pirangiel: Oh, come now! They can’t _all_ be that weak, can they? God wouldn’t make them with _that_ big a design flaw.

Wouldn’t She? You never can tell with ineffability.

Grusiel: All right, so, they’re weak. The demons exploit that. And that’s why they need us, right? Because we’re strong.

Are we, though?

Grusiel: Well, of course we are -

Who here didn’t touch a honeycake before I took them all away? Show of hands? Anybody?

_Uncomfortable shifting, rustling of wings_

You’re all fresh from heaven. None of you has ever tasted anything prior to licking honey off your fingers. You barely know how to process smells. You don’t need to eat. You all came here specifically to learn how best to perform a difficult, dangerous, and important duty, intending to pay attention. And yet the only ones of you who don’t have at least one sticky finger are the ones who thought you’d be clever, and got sticky quills, instead.

Alaudiel: Well, they were, they were just sitting there, and we’d never seen anything like them before, and you didn’t _explain_ -

No, I didn’t. I never do. And no class has yet gotten entirely through the Temptation of Eve without everyone in it poking a honeycake, at least once. I want you to remember these honeycakes when you’re getting impatient with your human charges for letting themselves get distracted by things that seem to you trivial or irrelevant. Because unlike you, humans are designed to have bodily needs, and rampant curiosity, and short, intense lifespans in which twenty things tend to be happening at once, only _one_ of which will be the choice between good and evil in which you happen to be interested.

_Subdued murmurs_

All right, time for a break, and then we’ll talk about distractions, their uses and abuses. (_Clap, followed by surprised, pleased sounds, Aziraphale’s bubbly laugh_) I wouldn’t wave honeycakes in front of you and never let you eat them! That would be unkind. (_Sound of clay cups landing on desks from nowhere, ringing slightly; and something dripping_) I’ll also come around with this cold buttermilk, and we’ll all eat and drink together, which is something you may find yourself doing among humans at any time. Some of you will love the experience, some of you will hate it, but the important thing to remember is: Humans need it. There’s direct relationships among bodily needs, virtues, and sins which are almost impossible for an angel to grasp without experience...

**(Transcript ends)**

**Note in Gabriel’s handwriting**:_ Enough is enough. Some angels can’t take a hint. Aziraphale’s removed from all formal education courses. Assign to generalized blessing duty in Mesopotamia until further notice. Find new instructor who won’t shove gross matter in students’ faces._  
_Query: What is buttermilk? That doesn’t sound like a real thing._

_-30-_


End file.
